this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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RCS is a proprietary standard, but it is not owned or controlled by Google. They just happen to be one of the first major corporations to embrace and implement the standard.
Allowing and implementing are not the same things. They implemented encryption in their RCS services. They don't allow everyone to use their service, but they built and own it so that's their right, I guess.
Can you elaborate here? How do they control the standard? Specifically, I'm not asking about their implementation of RCS, because of course they control that, but their implementation is not the same thing as the standard itself.
It's widely understood that it's difficult to implement a competent web browser. That's why there are only a handful of browser choices. This doesn't make HTTP a monopolistic protocol.
Saying the RCS standard is a monopolistic standard makes zero sense to me, even in practice. We are quite literally discussing another vendor entering the market. If you run a telecom and want to implement RCS, you are able to do so. If you are a phone manufacturer you are free to implement RCS in your software stack. None of this is easy, but it's possible and so this isn't a monopoly situation as far as I understand it. Google wanted to compete with iMessage so they built a competitor on a proprietary but open global standard, the standard which is meant to replace SMS and MMS messaging.
A bunch of carriers implemented it originally, but their implementations were all horribly broken, with messages between carriers usually not working, the carrier-installed messaging apps sucking, etc. Eventually they all dropped it and Google picked up the ashes and "fixed it" by making their server the only one instead of having per-carrier servers like SMS/MMS.
Yeah, this really all feels like the carriers have dropped the ball.